Top News Stories –

Crufts dog dies after suspected poisoning –
A dog has died after competing at Crufts, amid claims he was poisoned. Three-year-old Thendara Satisfaction, known as Jagger, is understood to have collapsed and died after returning home to Belgium on Friday. Police in Belgium are investigating and a full toxicology report is expected next week. The husband of Jagger’s co-owner said: “I can only hope it wasn’t an act of jealousy by another competitor, but just a lunatic.” Jagger, who came second in his class at Birmingham’s NEC on Thursday, is owned by Belgian Aleksandra Lauwers and Leicester-based breeder Dee Milligan-Bott. [BBC] See List of the Day.

Solar plane takes of to fly round the world –
A record-breaking attempt to fly around the world in a solar-powered plane has got under way from Abu Dhabi. The aircraft – called Solar Impulse-2 – took off from the Emirate, heading east to Muscat in Oman. Over the next five months, it will skip from continent to continent, crossing both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the process. Andre Borschberg was at the controls of the single-seater vehicle as it took off at 07:12 local time (03:12 GMT). He will share the pilot duties in due course with fellow Swiss, Bertrand Piccard. See Video of the Day.

Wheels come off epic plan –
Producers working on the remake of the Oscar-winning Ben Hur have been barred from shooting the epic chariot scene at the Circus Maximus. Filmmakers already on location in Rome and the southern city of Matera reportedly made a request to use the ancient stadium immortalised by the film in December. But it was feared the decision to bring hundreds of extras and heavy vehicles into a fragile archaeological site would lead to public outcry. [Daily Mail]

Video of the Day –

Launch of Solar Impulse

List of the day –

Best in Show at Crufts since 1928 (Wikipedia)

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Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Boko Haram
  • Forces from Niger and Chad launch a ground and air offensive against Boko Haram Islamist militants in northeasternNigeria. (BBC)
• A rocket and shelling attack in Kidal, northern Mali kills three people, including a UN peacekeeper. (Al Jazeera)
• A bomb explodes outside a French supermarket in Alexandria, Egypt, killing one person and wounding six. (AP via News24)

International relations

• Murder of Boris Nemtsov
  • A court in Moscow charges two men of Chechen origin, Zaur Dadayev and Ansur Gubashev, who were among five arrested March 7, with the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. The others also arrested, Gubashev’s younger brother Shahid Gubashev and two others named only as Bakhayev and Eskerkhanov, are still only suspects. (AFP via MSN)
  • A sixth suspect in Nemtsov’s murder, Beslan Shavanov, 30, who had been holed up in a building in Chechnya‘s capital, Grozny, blows himself up. (CNN)

Law and crime

• A unknown gunman in a vehicle kills Dreekius Oricko Johnson, 28, and wounds former Tennessee Titans and New York Jets running back Chris Johnson in Orlando, Florida. (USA Today via MSN)

Science and technology

• The U.S. Army, working with the U.S. Navy and NASA, through its Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator transport helicopter re-design program, in the latest issue of Army Technology Magazine, takes note of some new designsSikorsky-Boeing (the Sikorsky Defiant, which like the existing Sikorsky X2 and Sikorsky S-97 Raider, features a fasterpusher propeller) and Bell Helicopter (the V-280 Valor, which resembles a slimmed-down version of the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey, and comes in three versions: a troop- and equipment-carrying utility style, a medevac, and an attack chopper) have come up with since they were selected by the Pentagon in August 2014. (Popular Science via MSN)

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